I sec. a.C.
DIODORO SICULO, Biblioteca storica, IV, 74, 3
Testo tratto da: Diodorus Siculus, Books IV (continued) 59-8, with an English translation by C. H. Oldfather, Harvard university press, London Cambridge Mass. 1952, p. 289
To him were born a son Pelops and a daughter Niobe, and Niobe became the mother of seven sons and an equal number of daughters, maids of exceeding beauty. And since she gave herself haughty airs over the number of her children, she frequently declared in boastful way that she was more blest in her children than was Leto. At this, so the myths tell us, Leto in ager commanded Apollo to slay with his arrows th sons of Niobe and Artemis the daughters. And when these two hearkened to the command of their mother and slew with their arrows the children of Niobe at the same time, it came to pass, that immediately, almost in a single moment, that woman was both blest with children and children.
